Massarotti: Lead's never big enough

The lead might be 20 games, and there might only be a month to play, but the anxiety never goes away. Baseball just doesn't work that way.

Tony Massarotti/Boston Herald

The lead might be 20 games, and there might only be a month to play, but the anxiety never goes away. Baseball just doesn't work that way.

``It's just a different kind of fear,'' Seattle Mariners manager Mike Hargrove said last night at Safeco Field, where the Red Sox and Mariners resumed a three-game series. ``It starts out as you trying to build a lead, and then when you build a lead like the Red Sox have, your fear is about not giving it up.''

We know what you're thinking: What does Hargrove know?

Before Hargrove managed the Mariners, before he managed the Baltimore Orioles, Hargrove led a Cleveland Indians team that won five straight American League Central Division championships from 1995-99. Those Indians never won a World Series, but they claimed a pair of AL championships and were the dominant team in the league.

Entering last night, despite Monday's series-opening loss, the Red Sox still had a spongy 10-game lead that seemed as comfortable as a sleep-number bed. Still, that advantage seems almost laughable compared to leads held by the Indians of the late 1990s, who dominated their division like no other club in baseball, including the New York Yankees.

Proof? Beginning in 1995, the Indians won the Central by 30 games - yes 30 - ahead of the second-place Kansas City Royals. Cleveland's subsequent four division titles came by 14 games, six games, nine games and 21 games, and it seemed like the Indians never really were threatened at any point during their reign.

The '95 season, especially, was a landslide. Hargrove's team won 100 games in a strike-shortened 144-game schedule. When asked what team was in Cleveland's rearview mirror, the manager gave a succinct reply.

``Nobody,'' he said. Naturally, all of this pertains to the 2007 Red Sox, who continue to have the biggest lead in baseball. The Sox were 12-12 in their previous 24 games, but they continue to coast along without a real worry in the world.

In competition, after all, everything is relative.

``They didn't get a 10-game lead because they're lucky. They got a 10-game lead because they're good,'' Hargrove said. ``You can see it in their faces and in the way they carry themselves.''

So, the question persists: Why the fear?

Blessed with a deep and talented roster in Cleveland - the '99 Indians were the last major league club to score 1,000 runs - Hargrove never worried about his team growing complacent. Thus far, the 2007 Sox similarly have shown no such tendencies.

Players tend to keep themselves in check, Hargrove said, and there are ways to deal with players who are losing focus or energy or both.

``Usually, if I felt like there were guys that turned it off for a couple of days, we'd give them a couple of days off and bring them in (to the manager's office) to talk,'' Hargrove said. ``But they were usually aware of it.''

Somewhat incredibly, next Monday, the Sox will play their 81st game of the season, officially reaching the midpoint of their schedule. They are guaranteed of being in first place.

Yet the season can always turn on an injury or unexpected slump, and so baseball lifers, like Hargrove, always know the first rule of the game: You take nothing for granted.

``Your job as a manager is to hope for the best and prepare for the worst,'' Hargrove said.